


how to boil water

by fullmetalpetticoat



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch (Overwatch) - Freeform, Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Character Study, Flashbacks, Gabe & Jack love each other damn it, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Other, Reaper-centric, Self-Harm, Some SEP Scenes, Swearing, Talon Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-01-16 15:23:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12345366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmetalpetticoat/pseuds/fullmetalpetticoat
Summary: Reaper comes to his senses.





	1. choose an empty durable vessel

“Do you know what anger is, Commander Reyes?"  
  
Gabriel's already got his attitude on lock, arms folded tight as soon as his ass hit the chair. No good sense to blow up on the shrink when she isn't the one who forced him here.  
  
_It could do you some good, Gabi._  
  
To their credit, both Ana and Jack have already seen the professionals in their respective bases of operations. Ana goes willingly, once every six weeks – like a haircut, simply maintenance. She talks to him about it when he asks, when the devil in the back of his head wonders _if it really does help_ a little too loudly.  
  
Jack, on the other hand, sits pretty in Switzerland, wasting his life and running his eyes over paperwork for hours, for days at a time – that's probably part of his problem, Gabriel thinks. ( _How long has it been since you've actually been out in the field, Jackie? - Fuck off, Gabe.)_ It's easier to send the Strike-Commander to therapy, considering he's the most owned man out of all of them. Once in a while there's a yank on his leash, the UN tightens the collar on his neck and when he barks, they send him to a small room, unarmed, to work out his emotions.  
  
Gabriel laughs every time it happens. The first time, they had a back and forth over text comm as soon as the word of God came down and knocked Strike-Commander Morrison out of orbit. Relieved from active duty until complied.  
  
[GR] _Give me a situation report._  
  
[JM] _Giving me orders now?_  
  
Then, a moment later:  
  
[JM] _Boots on the ground._  
  
Gabriel grins and watches the landslide of creative criticisms Jack has for the waiting room, for all the two minutes he's made to wait. Thirty seconds in and he's thoroughly eviscerated the drapes and carpet, forty-five seconds in he's trying to convince him he's found a seventy-year-old copy of Newsweek but refusing to send him a photo of it. It's one minute and thirty seconds in when he follows the statement _this room smells like sandalwood and bullshit_ with an outline to his new conspiracy: the Swiss Headquarters were built around this one room, incubating it like a hundred-year-old molten core.  
  
Then there's radio silence and that eventually leaves Gabriel freezing his ass off in Watchpoint: Trenton in the middle of January with no one to talk to.  
  
Watchpoint: Trenton sits on the precipice of interurban visibility, and while Overwatch never exactly tries to shy away from big, flashy bases of operation, without the benefit of a proper defense structure or an outfitted staff, Trenton has to be grand only in spirit. No large shipments, no armaments beyond the bare necessities, no vital information that can't be wiped instantly and remotely. No big names, not if they can help it, and especially not for longer than a cursory sweep. Athena still has a few strings attached to the place but the bulk of her attention is, and should be, spent elsewhere. It's more of a hideout, a bunker. If it ever gets taken it won't be a serious loss.  
  
Or at least that's what Gabriel has on the place, most of it coming from personal experience. He knows two things for certain: Trenton was one of the first bases built – very hastily – at the start of the Overwatch era of the crisis, a response to the growing threat on the eastern coast of the United States – and after that, no one saw the need to develop it any further.  
  
He spent three days here during the Crisis after suffering a spray of bullets across his back and shoulders, with some fractures as a parting gift. They meticulously picked out the shrapnel, set and dressed his wounds, then left him alone to rest and regenerate. No one bothers to forget he’s a super soldier, especially not when there are mortals to tend to.  
  
_Any other man would be dead_ , every single one of his medics told him. _Except for me,_ Jack added under his breath, just loud enough for Gabe to hear and laugh and disturb the tourniquet, because of course he was right there two out of the three days, as though having one super soldier out of the fight didn't seem like enough.  
  
_[JM] Just get it over with, Gabe. It’s not that bad._  
  
_[JM] You know we want you back here._  
  
_[JM] Don’t drag it out._  
  
Gabriel rolls his head, staring up at the ceiling.  
  
“Commander Reyes?”  
  
And he’s snapped back to the present.  
  
The doctor is looking at him with a measured smile, pen poised over the notepad. “Do I… have your attention?"  
  
There’s a moment where he wants to absolutely be an asshole, primarily because this generic line of questioning is dragging on and he’s starting to get distracted. But considering that’s mostly his own problem, he simply nods and sits forward. “Go on,” he says.  
  
Admittedly, he had been examining her appearance as a method of simply keeping his eyes occupied, noting the crisp white nail polish chipped at the tips of her index fingers, red hair pulled back into a loose bun, a shade that reminds him of a recent mission he’d gone on with Ana – sand at sunset. A deep scar that splits her lips on the left side, curious and entirely too cool-looking.  
  
She searches his face carefully, glancing back down at her notes once before setting the pen down. “Okay,” she chirps. “I’ll get to the point.”  
  
Well, shit. Now he’s warming up to her.  
  
“Anger is not so much a proper emotion, as it is a reaction to another emotion. You feel grief, fear, pain, or you feel cheated or confused, and it has no appropriate outlet available… Well, anger is very easy to access.” She neatly puts her notes together and lays them flat on the desk behind her, abandoning the observations. “I’m telling you this because it’s helpful in managing it long-term. Once your anger can be deconstructed and examined, you can learn to control it, maybe use it more productively.”  
  
Honestly, Gabriel’s impressed by her candor but betrays nothing. “Oh, really.”  
  
She smiles and stands up. “Absolutely, Commander. I used to punch walls. Now, I just count to ten.” Her hand shakes with a thought as she files her notes away. “But,” she adds, “if you are going to punch a wall, I want to help you do so in such a way that you don’t break your hand.”

* * *

His first kill is a gift. It's a set-up. It's a fucking joke.  
  
The target cowers in the corner of a small cell, body heavy with induced lethargy, halfway to drooling on the floor. He swings his head around slowly, trying to recognize his surroundings, trying to register anything but muted fear. Body littered with burns, bruises, cuts, and other small mutilations – he's not going anywhere soon.  
  
When Reaper materializes in front of him, drawn up from the solid ground like a plume of smoke, the prisoner hardly reacts at all. He lifts his head and stares at Reaper for about a minute, hooded eyes tracing every line of his form before sinking to the floor with a gentle shake of his head – _no, no._  
  
Reaper hesitates. There's an impatient tap on the glass window behind him and he almost flinches. They're watching, but he keeps still. He knows what they think – they think he's thinking. He doesn't think. He waits for a signal, something in the back of his head keeps breaking through the white noise and says _wait, test your limit, see how far you can resist._  
  
Another minute passes, a few verbal warnings he ignores, and then his spine erupts like a lightning rod.  
  
Reaper groans and sways, resists. Another jolt, he stumbles to a knee, resists. Another jolt, he loses composure for just a second, becoming like smoke and reforming closer to the target. The shocks lessen in intensity but run consistent like a live wire from the base of his spine to the back of his neck, turning his thoughts to dust and drowning out the little voice. It's replaced by the pain and a white-hot rage.  
  
There's a clamor of voices when he comes to, and he's up to his elbows with blood. From the floor he can see – the prisoner's chest cavity is gaping open like a sinkhole and his neck is torn to ribbons. Personnel trod carelessly through the pool of blood and sing him lackluster praises. The prisoner stares at him with cold, dead eyes, and the little voice stirs in the back of his head, trying and failing to articulate past the waves of red.  
  
Reaper melts into shadow and leaves.

* * *

There's an incident, a couple weeks later.  
  
Reaper wanders when he's not being tested. With such a weak grasp on how to even keep a solid form, he drifts, quite literally, around the base. He becomes frantic when he remembers just enough to be properly terrified. His wraith throws itself down a long, surgical-metal corridor and becomes solid at the last second, slamming into the pair of doors to a freight elevator. A shaking claw reaches up and taps the call button.  
  
Sometimes he forgets how to do that thing with the smoke, and he tries to convince himself he's going to master it, since it seems to be the only thing he has going for him. These people – _Talon_ , his head snaps to the side when that name hits his brain like a bullet, _don't forget_ – care little to show their concern for his personal development, so he has to do it himself. Well-oiled and tightened like a treasured weapon that keeps dissociating every twenty minutes. He's doing better, though- it used to be ten.  
  
There's a _ding_ and the doors slide open. Reaper hadn't pushed any buttons, only hunkered down on the floor like a wet blanket. When he turns his eyes up from the ground there's a guard in stark black, training his rifle on him. An electrical hum fills the room, the guard slips his finger on the trigger, Reaper _tries_ to dominate his rage – and fails.  
  
He lashes out and rakes his claws down the guard's face before he takes the shot, and they both fall out of the elevator and to the floor. Through the deafening screams, Reaper dismantles the guard the only way he knows how: like a kid on Christmas.  
  
Alarms cycle somewhere in the distance. Reaper vaguely registers a chorus of shouts and approaching footsteps on his periphery. A new sensation assaults him: hunger.  
  
In the pale glow of the basement florescents, Reaper holds up a still heart. Viscera and blood trickle down his arm, and he stares, trying to discern if he should eat it. He eventually places it to the side and keeps digging, drawn to a pulsating scarlet glimmer coalescing a little farther back.  
  
_This is it,_ he thinks, holding the orb in his hands. It shivers and bleeds, drops fall off the sides and evaporate where they land. There's a cavernous empty space in him that burns and eats him away, and for a moment that agony abates as the orb sinks into his body and disappears. When he looks up, a dozen people are standing around, and by the looks on most of their faces, they've been here for a while.

* * *

At some point, Talon arbitrarily decides to give him a sizable outfit of idiots, who help him track down and eliminate rogue targets. After a few ostensibly successful missions, Reaper silently decides that his team is _earnest._ They've seen what he can do now, in every way imaginable, and now their success is primarily driven by their fear of failure. Their targets are formidable, and after some time being hunted, they too have a fortified sense of self-preservation and their survival instincts are honed to an edge. Without any precedent to go by, Reaper and his team have been going in much less prepared than he'd prefer. Sometimes he loses agents to stupid shit.  
  
They lost Miller to a mine. In hindsight, Reaper's glad he's dead. _Stealth and explosives expert_ written plainly on the face of the dossier. They heard the rattle and still picked up the snake. He had manifested halfway into the hideout when the blast ripped through the building. Miller did one good thing in flushing the agent out so Reaper could pull the trigger, and then he died begging into the comm. Reaper's glad he's dead.  
  
A life spent hunting strikes him just fine, since most days he's so angry he'll put his fist through anything, but Reaper’s aware. They say the name Overwatch and nothing else, like he’s a non-essential, like he doesn’t belong in the Know. There's a reason, and they've insulted him by keeping him in the dark. As soon as that _why_ occurs to him, he spends time formulating ways of capturing agents rather than obliterating them on sight. He wants them alive, he wants to talk to them.  
  
The first one he gets alive spits in his face. They remain loyal to Overwatch, for all the good it seems to do them. All he gets are promises that he won't ever get what he wants. Occasionally, when put under duress, they'll sob names that rush his memory like an angry bull and disappear, and he can't recall them even a second later. Frustrated, he usually resorts to ripping the hearts out of them.  
  
There's no good word for what he feels and half the time he forgets how to speak at all, his throat turning to ichor and all the words to black smoke in his mouth. He falls to pieces and when he puts himself back together the agent is dead and his people are waiting, eerily comfortable lingering among the gore. Nothing works, but they help him drag on.

* * *

Gabriel slumps against the open window, clutching the sill with one arm thrown out in the night air, a cold breeze rolls over his face and it’s the only thing keeping him alive. He presses his face against the rough wood and groans, wondering how they might explain it to his grandmother that he died a week into the program. Some hours ago he stumbled into his room, shaking so violently it took him three tries to get a good grasp on the lock. No one has come calling, thankfully. Considering how wrecked he was as soon as he stood up from the table and none of them had bothered to even take a second look, the least they could do is stay out of his way for a day or two. The only one who can disturb him at this point is-  
  
“Gabriel?”  
  
He turns his head slowly, trying not to anger the rolling waves of his stomach. His roommate is a goddamn ghost. He was also supposed to be out pushing curfew. Gabriel scowls and looks at the clock on the wall – 10pm. “Shit,” he mumbles, dropping his head.  
  
The roommate comes around slowly, like he’s circling a wounded animal, and peers into Gabriel’s face. “You look like shit,” he says. “Let me take you to medical.”  
  
“No,” Gabriel says, short and hard. “No more doctors.”  
  
There’s silence, then a very light brush against his face. He jerks back and instant regret slams into him as his head starts pounding and his stomach drops, so he gently slumps back against the window. “Morrison, if you touch me, I’ll vomit.”  
  
Jack smiles and pulls his hand away instantly. “That’s not the first time I’ve heard that, you know.” When Gabriel says nothing his smile drops into worry. “Were you in the first round of treatments? Was that today?”  
  
For a man who’s one good sneeze away from a swift death, he’s being asked way, way too many questions. But he likes Jack well enough, so he rewards his steadfast concern with an affirmative grunt.  
  
“Oh,” Jack says. Gabriel takes a glance and can see the gears turning in his head trying to find the safest route to comfort him and he wants to advise him to just leave for a while, but he also wants to see what he comes up with. His arm twitches like he’s just physically restrained himself from reaching out again, and he sighs. “Is there anything I can do for you? I can keep you company.”  
  
Gabriel shakes his head, he can’t form many words around his swollen tongue and it’s _so hot_ he can barely think. “Want to be alone,” he says, and buries his face in the crook of his arm.  
  
“Are you sure? What if you get worse?”  
  
Gabriel groans in response.  
  
“I can tell you a story or something to distract you, like the time I got frosted tips in high school-”  
  
“ _Leave_ ,” Gabriel says, drawing out the word in agony.  
  
Jack heaves a sigh and stands up. “Alright, but if you need anything you have my number.”  
  
His footsteps move heavy and slow towards the door and, for some reason, Gabriel starts to panic. Suddenly he’s assailed with anxiety. He wants to be alone for his pride, but he desperately doesn’t. He makes a choice. “Wait,” he says. Besides, his phone’s broken. He steadies himself with a hand on the ground and turns to look at Jack, who’s already moved halfway back with a hopeful, embarrassingly kind face. God, he’s _so_ sick, he hopes Jack doesn’t try to touch him again. “How the hell do you do frosted tips on blonde hair?”

* * *

It’s his Day Off, for whatever good it does him, and his liaisons explain he can do as he pleases provided he doesn’t wander off too far or cost them any more tangible assets. He considers dematerializing in a corner until they wake him up, incubating in a cloud of thoughtless black smoke.  
  
But- because he’s discovered the luxury of being bored and he isn’t interested in the prospect of being leashed by suits who find him _fascinating,_ he swipes a data pad and coerces a relaxing pilot into flying him away from Talon’s base.  
  
They find a spot about an hour later– a small, flat valley in the pocket of a mountain range. Reaper has no goddamn idea where they are – and does not care at all to ask – and the pilot doesn’t say. It’s nice enough, he supposes.  
  
He’s in that comfortable spot between completely unpopular and way too powerful to just ignore. They have a tracker in him anyway, so it doesn’t matter where he wanders off to. The pilot spares him a disinterested glance before settling into his seat, leaning his head back before quickly dozing off. Fine.  
  
Reaper puts some distance between himself and the plane, finds a nice big rock, and collapses against it. The air feels different up here, though he doesn’t breathe it to tell. All he can really feel is a sense that he’s _thicker_ up here, a palpable weight that anchors to the earth instead of just a forced state of being. It’s… nice.  
  
There’s a breeze that’s shifting his hood around and its whistle mingles with the song of morning birds, a slight rustling of leaves. Sunrise is creeping up in wildfire hues against the night sky, and that light throws long shadows across the field.  
  
Reaper takes all of this in and does something uncharacteristic.  
  
He sets the datapad down gently and stands, strips off his coat and folds it, then sets it aside. Slowly he reaches behind his head and disengages the fasteners on his mask, letting it drop into his hand. Reaper looks up at the sun.  
  
Without his mask he’s vulnerable, in a few ways. The gold-white bone of it has become a comfort, running his fingers over the scratches and scars when he’s bothered. He puts it on top of the coat now, discarding it to run his hands through his hair, carefully clawing at the back of his skull. The wind hits his skin in full and, while he can’t feel the cold of it he feels it hitting his face and sloughing the dust from him – a welcome relief from the stagnate confinement of his facade. The voice in his head hums.  
  
There’s a chirp from his datapad – signal found. Reaper slumps down against the rock and turns from the sun. He tilts the datapad slightly away from his reflection and types ‘Overwatch’ into a search bar. Brazen, but he has no tricks for tech yet. It’s either risk this or remain in ignorance, and he’ll trade a round of punishment for a little light any day. His claws inflict little wounds on the glass.  
  
What comes up is spotty at best. A lot of information has been omitted, but he’s disquieted to learn just how public the organization was, just how scrambled he seemed to be. Names and dates are blacked out, of course. There’s some general info on structure and the work they did. It was disbanded shortly after a... revolt within ranks, a colossal explosion at their headquarters. Though no bodies were found… both… commanders-  
  
Reaper’s claws go through the device and it shatters into thirds.  
  
“Damn,” he mutters, dropping the pieces. The voice in his head feels like a riot, but everything it says is forgotten as quickly as it’s heard. Reaper sits in silence for a while, bathing in the sun as he gradually drifts back to calm contentment. An immobilizing hum purring in the back of his head quiets finally, giving him back full control of his body. He hates that shit.  
  
No matter. He runs his claws against the ground, digging small, deep trenches into the dirt. If asked, he wouldn’t be able to put words to the sensation of joy. They simply aren’t there. He knows calm now, which is a blessing since he became so familiar with the earlier days of his unrelenting rage, metered only by frequent bouts of exhaustion, and a misery so deep he would lose entire days. But here and now there’s a moment for him to feel alright, all things considered.  
  
He jerks as a notices something new. An impression of his body that only just now existed. He reaches into his armor, under the ballistic padding and compression suit, where something cold presses against his chest.  
  
What he pulls out is attached to a thin chain – two tags. He’s taken and discarded many of these already, off bodies of hunted agents. He reads the name on it, then reads it again, and again.  
  
Who the _fuck_ is Jack Morrison?


	2. fill it with water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all thought I was dead huh
> 
> headcanons ahoy!

It takes about a week, but Reaper comes to the conclusion that he is _not_ Jack Morrison – as far as he can tell.  
  
Jack Morrison is a name that’s blacked out on Talon’s network and equipment, so finding a photo of the man is impossible at this point unless he gets away. It’s also a name that sounds like it belongs on the cover of a mystery novel or in a newspaper article about the decline of man-operated tractors.  
  
Despite the fact that he’s been wearing a dog tag bearing that name, his doubts are strong enough to not elicit any real anxiety about it. It’s more of an unenthusiastic disappointment that his list of possible identities continues to shrink at a glacial pace. But – he does get curious enough to finally risk a glance in a mirror.  
  
What stares back at him is unrecognizable. It’s person-like, just going by what he’s seen in others. Reaper isn’t pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but if encountered by someone he most likely could be identified as an embodiment of something that was definitely human at some point. Probably. Maybe an echo of someone who once might have been handsome. _Maybe.  
  
_ Absolute confusion keeps his eyes on the monster in the mirror. What was supposed to be a quick glance turns into a full-blown existential crisis as he stares wide-eyed, trying to piece together who he could possibly be. It’s like trying to see a picture through the static on a television, bits and pieces triggering waves of recognition but never quite enough to bring the full picture.  
  
He curls a hand against his thigh. The other goes to his face, running along his jaw where patches of hair still seem to grow around the gaping hole by his mouth. Those teeth that show through are bone-white. His skin is a deep, dark color under dusty gray, a sickly sheen cast on it by the glowing light above the sink.  
  
Looking at himself in the eyes brings on a wave of nausea so strong he turns away and retches into a small waste bin. What comes up is like tar, pitch-black and sticking to the back of his throat. His concept of disgusting is abstract at best, so all that passes through his mind as he grips the wire basket hard enough to dent and chokes back more bile is the obvious thought that he was never supposed to look at himself so closely. Pieces of his face still filter through but most of it is gone, ejected from his mind so forcefully it inspires a raging migraine.  
  
He stumbles to the tub and collapses over the rim, sinking down until his spinal cage shrieks against the porcelain. He twists, maneuvering his large body well enough to reach over and turn on the faucet.  
  
A shower of frigid water rains down on him and shocks him into intense focus, driving away the migraine just enough to calm him down. He lets out the breath he’s been holding for two weeks and closes his eyes, condemns the weight of the tags against his chest, the cold metal a comfort as well as a horrible annoyance.  
  
When he comes to there’s a person in the doorway to the bathroom.  
  
Widowmaker’s lithe silhouette barely moves at any given time, belying her grace and hustle in a firefight, but now she’s damn near statuesque, chest still with lungs that rarely breathe and a heart that beats about once a minute. He’s still lounging in his compression suit, soaked to the bone, looking however it is he looks to make her stare down at him neatly disinterested – a rare absence of pity – before leaving silently.  
  
He wishes, God damn it, he wishes she would have said something to him. The quiet horror of feeling hollowed out amplifies tenfold when faced with someone who’s even emptier than that. In that long moment of staring at each other he wanted to scream. What it might have done to him for her to reach down and help him up is a rope tightening around his neck.  
  
It’s a sensation of misery so ironclad it feels like he’s sinking, yet he struggles to claim ownership to it. It’s discomfort and guilt growing thick roots in his stomach that take a stab at him every time he looks at her and sees nothing staring back, yet he can recall no events that could have inspired it. He simply woke up one day, saw her for the first time, and knew the deepest trenches of an implacable grief that hovers over him like an angry god.  
  
What he felt when he looked in the mirror – not so different than that.  
  
He pushes that thought down, leans back against the tile and decides he doesn’t look like a Jack Morrison.  
  
*  
  
Gabriel has his hands up above his shoulders, looking down at Jack’s head and trying to decide where to strike first. “I can’t believe this,” he says for the third time in two minutes.  
  
Jack tips his head back and frowns. “I’m being very vulnerable right now, can you at least try to take it seriously?” He’s sitting in his underwear with a towel around his shoulders. Vulnerable might be a word for it, if they both weren’t so jacked on what Gabriel still jokes are glorified steroids.  
  
An incriminating box disgraces the wastebasket and there’s a streak of bleach-white dye slowly dripping down the side of the sink that neither of them bother to acknowledge yet.  
  
Gabriel’s got sisters. He’s also got big crinkly gloves on and a bottle of hair dye in one hand, staring down at Jack’s roots where a new shade of hair somewhat darker than his typical marshmallow-ass has started coming in.  
  
For the life of him, Gabriel doesn’t know why it bothers him so much. It’s truly driving him crazy. Maybe it’s because-  
  
“It’s been three months since we’ve met and everything I know about you is a lie.”  
  
A chuckle rushes out of Jack like a sob. “You’re crazy. You know that, right?”  
  
“I’m just saying,” Gabriel mumbles as he squeezes the contents of the bottle into his other hand with finality and sets it back down on the counter. “I thought you were just cursed at birth, but you actually put effort into looking like a cauliflower asshole.”  
  
“It’s not even that light-” Jack stutters, shoulders seizing up for a moment when Gabriel slaps the handful of cold hair dye onto the top of his head. He shudders. “You’re going to change your mind when you start going _gray_.”  
  
“I’m never going gray, first of all.” Gabriel works his fingers through Jack’s hair, digging into the scalp. He’s covering all the guilty roots, wondering what could have been. Jack hums appreciatively.  
  
“Oh, right. You uh, made a Faustian pact to stay forever young and good-looking.”  
  
“Yeah, a pact called the Soldier Enhancement Program and here I am,” Gabriel says. He pauses and catches Jack’s eye in the mirror, smirking. “You really think I’m good-looking?” He tilts his face, examining his profile while Jack groans.  
  
“No shit,” Jack says, taking the fork he stole from the mess hall and impatiently scratching behind his ear with it. Gabriel knocks it away and drags his nails over the spot, returning to this task at hand with a little more care. “Thanks,” Jack mutters with a sigh.  
  
“Why, anyway?” Gabriel asks after a few minutes of comforting silence. Jack’s got a regulation haircut, so he’s almost done working the dye into it. “You really like the color?”  
  
Jack almost does this thing – where he rubs the back of his neck when he’s anxious – but stops short. His hand clamps over his left arm and squeezes at the edges of a few scars instead. “It makes me stand out more,” he says.  
  
“And you _want_ that?” Gabriel says, no heat in his voice. He’s gone from the roots to the edges, smoothing the off-white into the boundary of his hairline. No missed spots. Again, sisters.  
  
“Listen,” he says. “We were picked out as the best out of, what, _everyone?”_ He’s taking a hard look at himself in the mirror, like he’s trying to break the glass with his mind. “Now we have to be the best out of the best.”  
  
Gabriel hums skeptically. He’s double-checking his spots, running his hand over Jack’s scalp one last time before pulling off the gloves and dropping them into the garbage. “You want first dibs on the treatments? The bruises, the morning sickness, the afternoon sickness, the two-in-the-morning sickness,” he says, ticking them off with his fingers. “You sure you don’t want to watch a few people go before you? See how bad it is?”  
  
“You’ve never done that, you-” Jack pauses, “-you always rush in.”  
  
“Yeah, and it gets me in a lot of trouble, Jackie.” Gabriel crosses his arms and leans against the bathroom wall. “It’s only been a few months, you know. I think you’re being preemptively anxious about your place.”  
  
Jack’s still on this bullshit when he looks back up at Gabriel, not absorbing anything he’s saying. “It’s kind of like high school. Say- I mean you either stand out or you go completely unnoticed, that middle part is useless-” he makes a vague gesture “-you’re either gorgeous, or you’re mean, or you’re really strong or you play the drums or some-”  
  
“Getting off track,” Gabriel interrupts.  
  
“I want more eyes on me,” Jack says. “Like you. People notice the shit you do, Gabriel.”  
  
Gabriel snorts. “I guess.” He looks back in the mirror, running a hand along his jaw. “So which am I? Gorgeous, mean, really strong?”  
  
“ _Mean,”_ Jack says as he steps out of the bathroom, grinning. “And a perfect shot.”  
  
“Not perfect,” Gabriel says. “Just better. You’re in the top five anyway, what’s wrong with that?”  
  
Jack reappears in the doorway, eyebrow raised. “I need to be number one.” He looks Gabriel up and down. “I might even settle for number two.”  
  
“Yeah, better get used to that idea now, Jack,” he mutters, laughing as Jack throws him a middle finger over his shoulder, disappearing back into their shared room to reclaim his spot in front of his datapad.  
  
*  
  
 **0300 Local Time  
  
** **Yalova, Turkey  
  
** There’s no designation for the operation yet, no name for the gauntlet of missions he runs to eradicate the last several dozen loose threads that Overwatch left behind when the walls came down. Maybe there doesn’t need to be, maybe it’ll just be a job that he does until he runs out of targets or one of them manages to trap him in a bottle. More like a hobby, really, a task that Talon doesn’t want to admit they’re spending resources on, or taking valuable time away from one of their strongest assets. After all, how dangerous can a cat be, after you’ve pulled out all of its claws and declared it an enemy of the world?  
  
It used to be fun. When he was mindless and following orders, every agent crumbled like a sand castle and he’d plunged his hands into the salty waters to feel how it was below the rocks and the seaweed.  
  
An excuse to travel.  
  
The ease of the endless torment of his weird fuckin’ body – something in other people made him whole.  
  
Now he’s wobbling under the infuriating weight of cognizance. With every kill comes more uncertainty that what he’s doing is anywhere near the realm of Good and it bothers him to even be concerned with that. It’s like he’s trying to find himself in a room of a hundred mirrors.  
  
With the dog tags against his chest and Talon communications blasting in his ear constantly, he’s decided to change his playbook. Going off script is what he’s known for now, and they’ve come to depend on it. Luckily, the goons they send out with him are the very model of replaceable so he can get them killed at alarming rates. He can lead them into a trap, watch them die, and as long as he eliminates the agent within the next few minutes no one even mentions it. Long term, he’s hoping to be deemed unfit for a team and eventually sent out on his own.  
  
For now, he’s severed his connection to his subordinates, leaving them wandering the coast searching for him the old fashioned way. The wind picked up as they landed, and that coupled with the somewhat remote area they’re operating in, it threw their communications into disarray. If he goes dark for a couple of hours, maybe none of them will think too hard about it. For good measure, he plucks the comm from his mask and crushes it between his palms. If he’s going to have a conversation with one of these rogue agents, he needs it to be private.  
  
He wanders around the marketplace, where the wind has blown over dense fog from the sea and he moves through it like a ghost. All of the little shops are barricaded with minimal reinforcement, as though protected more from the elements than from theft – a place where they still rely on the goodness of humanity and trust for each other to get by. Judging by the untouched quality of, well, everything, he guesses this seaside town has the right idea.  
  
Nice place to settle down if – Oh, _shit,_ don’t go there.  
  
Every apartment in the square has a balcony, every balcony has laundry drying on the railing or leafy greens spilling between the bars. Multi-colored flags and strands of bright lights hang in the spaces between one building and the next. In the distance, the winding grassy waterfront and intricately sprawling parks hug Marmara, and the rocky hills beyond that -- vast shadows against the starlit sky.  
  
Reaper moves on through the city silently, smoke over water, and a few lights blink out in the endless columns of apartments. The shotguns hang heavy against his thighs, unused for days.  
  
Eventually he eases out of the dense metropolitan area, across a wide road and an immaculate green yard to the shore where the sand meets the grass and water. So late at night, there’s not a soul on the beach but him.  
  
And one other. Somewhere further down the coastline.  
  
It was the quiet trill of a distress beacon in his head, bouncing off the walls of the empty space left in the absence of Talon operatives clucking in his ear.  
  
He goes incorporeal to drift down the coast swiftly, unsure if his team also hears the beacon, confident that even if they had they tend to drag ass without a leader, but not confident enough to take his time. This agent is his, alone. _Kennedy_ , the voice in his head purrs like a low roar.  
  
There’s a lonesome gazebo just beyond the sand of the beach. In it sits a figure, slouched with hands draped over knees, gazing out at the dark water. The shriek of the distress beacon calms to a whisper as he approaches.  
  
“Somehow I knew it would be you, Commander.”  
  
Reaper pauses mid-step and silently flips through his scattered memories but the voice is a mystery. There’s a gentle, submissive cadence to it that he knows he should know, feels the hum of it in his chest, but it’s another unknown. He has a familiar accent, but he can’t place it.    
  
“I admit, at first I didn’t believe it.” The man drawls on as Reaper rounds the gazebo, coming to stand in front of him. He’s got bags under his eyes, deep and black like makeup. When he looks at Reaper there’s a glimmer of hope so genuine and obscene even he can recognize it. Reaper can only linger, phasing in and out like a ghost.  
  
“You don’t recognize me, do you, boss?” he asks.  
  
“No.” Reaper tries to spit it at him, but in his haste he’s revealed a scrap of sympathy.  
  
The agent runs a hand through his mess of pale hair. In the barest light from the nearby lamp, it looks reddish. “That’s probably for the best,” he says with a heavy sigh.  
  
It’s right at that moment when Reaper notices the scattered hype kit at the man’s side, used and discarded on the bench. He tilts his head and the man follows his gaze, heaves up with another breath. “Ah, yeah.” He gathers the pieces up and dumps it into a bag at his feet. “I kept more than just the training from the old days, you know? I don’t intend to be taken in by anyone, not now.” He looks back up and into Reaper’s mask like he’s searching for eyes. “Slow to take effect, but absolutely fatal. Had a lot of fun with this stuff back in the day, that’s for sure.”  
  
Reaper stays silent. Tries to remember those days he keeps mentioning.  
  
“I’m definitely going to die here, boss,” he says encouragingly, leaning in and trying to break through. “But it gives us a chance to speak.” He pats the front of his suit and fishes out a cigarette and lighter from a pocket.  
  
“Then speak, agent Kennedy,” Reaper says. Talon knows him, while he didn’t bother to read the dossier beyond the need-to-knows. Not that it would have done him much good - there was a lot of black on that document.    
  
The agent looks excited for just a moment, and it’s in that moment that Reaper feels the worst. “No, that’s not what _you_ called me,” he says quietly. He shakily lights his cigarette and brings it to his lips, trapping it between his teeth.    
  
Agent Kennedy wrings his hands together nervously, looks anywhere but Reaper’s face. He’s wearing a nice suit, like he’s going to a funeral. According to his file, he was an infiltration expert. He could change his persona in an instant and had a dozen solid covers. He was working for Talon. He was working for [redacted.] “I’ve been on the lam for eight years. Do you know what that’s like?” _Kinda._ “I’m goddamn overjoyed that your lot has caught up with me.”  
  
Reaper gestures to the bag at his feet. “Could have ended it whenever you wanted.”  
  
The agent huffs. “Yeah, right, in a shack out in the middle of the desert. Some hostel in Berlin, right? Now, those are two places I’ve already almost died, and neither of them felt worth it.” His accent grows heavier the less patient he gets. “But, this-” he gestures between them “-this is good shit. I’ve waited years for this, and you don’t even remember me.”  
  
Now, Reaper had this grand idea. Drop on the agent, force them to spill about Overwatch, kill. Rinse, repeat, until he had some sort of breakthrough. This one is a game changer. Obviously he was in deep. Talon wants him dead because he has ties to Overwatch, though what in particular they won’t say. And because at some point, he defected and disappeared.  
  
This one _knows_ him. And now he’s going to lose him.  
  
If he’s going to get what he wants out of Agent Kennedy, he has to reconcile with him, he has to get on his level, and his current level is that gossamer-thin realm between dying and dead. Reaper can sympathize with that.   
  
All or nothing, he thinks. Reaper crouches down, waits until the agent works up the nerve to look him in the face. “You’re the first rogue agent I haven’t immediately put down,” he says. The agent keeps his mouth firmly shut, eyes watering. “I can’t remember who I am, or who I was.”  
  
“That’s a real shame,” the agent whispers, fiercely. A shudder goes down all of his hard edges, a sharp jab of real, true empathy. The voice in his head is quiet, but present. “I waited all these years for you to pop up again, even after that business in Switzerland, I knew, I knew-” he takes a deep breath. “You’re hard to kill, boss, always were.”  
  
“You know who I am,” Reaper says, the only thing in this conversation that makes sense. He’s taken note of every little detail to follow up on later, but the only thing he really needs is right in front of him, being dangled in his face like a taunt. He grows restless and agitated after the agent nods silently. “And you won’t tell me.”  
  
“Oh, no,” the agent says. He slumps against the wood frame of the gazebo, becoming lax at every point in his body. When he leans his head back and gazes up, a tear rolls down his face. “I won’t kill you a second time, boss.” Kennedy shudders, takes in one long, shaking breath, and swallows it. His eyes shut as he grips his thighs against a mighty tremor. “I’ve only ever seen this from the outside, but this really, really hurts,” he says, voice cracking.  
  
With a gasp he pulls himself forward again, reaching out to grasp at the collar of Reaper’s armor. Reaper wraps a hand around his wrist, but doesn’t move it.  
  
“But you- you always did right by me, boss. Even when I let you down.” Something was coming, a great upheaval of truth. Reaper tries to feel excited but all that comes up is dust. Despite his best attempt at apathy, it wasn’t so much the loss of valuable information the agent embodied that he was reluctant to lose, but the agent himself. Reaper grips his shoulder with his other hand, steadying him. Suddenly, faced with this impending inevitability, the only thing he can focus on is the muted grief in tandem with the voice who shares his thoughts. It’s a pain much more intense than he thought himself capable of.  
  
Between gasping breaths, the agent continues. “Go to Los Angeles. Don’t think too hard, just go there and follow your instincts. If you’re really still in there, then you deserve to know. If not-” he pauses to grimace and let go of Reaper’s armor. He slumps back against the wall, hands trembling in his lap. “If not, I won’t give you the satisfaction.” His gaze slides to the ground, as though embarrassed. Reaper realizes the agent is addressing two people: Reaper, and the potentiality of the man this agent knew quite well. The voice in his head rallies, a swell of anger and grief. A sudden, weak laugh escapes the agent. “I can’t believe we ever used this shit.”  
  
“There he is!”  
  
Reaper turns to his pack of goons, hustling their way to him, and he wonders.  
  
“Do it,” the agent says. Reaper turns to him and sees him wipe away the tears with the back of his hand, mouth set in a firm line. The black of his veins have started to overtake his face, the last surge of the poison in him. “I mean-” he makes a gun with his fingers and shoots it at himself. “If you don’t, they might get suspicious.”  
  
He wants to say something, but he can’t form the words. If they had fought at all, the banter would come easily. Kennedy closes his eyes and mumbles a string of words Reaper can’t make out, his hands fidgeting in his lap. He has nothing but this incriminating scene and a quickly-approaching party of witnesses. And less information than he hoped for. As he hefts the shotgun from his belt, the agent finishes his prayer and falls silent.  
  
One shot takes his head clean off, a splatter of blood against the wall. This time, that strange mass of energy is easier to take from the body, bleeding through the chest and collecting in the palm of his hand like it was coming home. His grunts gather around him as he consumes it.  
  
“Great work, boss,” one of them says, deadpan. Another relays a message quietly through her com. He hears the feedback from her device announcing evac soon.  
  
He could turn around and obliterate all of them in three seconds. It would be so easy, and the chance of reprimand is still surprisingly low.  
  
But he hesitates. All he has are the few little pieces of information he got from the agent, the unobtrusive but profound sorrow in the back of his mind, and the insistent ringing in his ears, the distress beacon that has not yet stopped screaming and will not likely be silenced for a long time.  
  
Rather than lash out, he takes some time to treasure these. Stands apart from his subordinates, facing the vast darkness of the water, patient and still as a statue. _This_ , he thinks as another malaise comes to rest over him, a hollowed-out sensation in his chest and a numb stillness in his head – _this will last_.  
  
*  
  
“Twenty-four, please return to your dorm.”  
  
Gabe pretends not to hear her, which is a bold move considering the speaker is three feet away. He rolls his eyes to the side, settles his gaze on the limp hand in his grip. It’s been four hours, though it feels more like ten minutes. Jack’s face is still kind of ghost-white.  
  
“Twenty-four.”  
  
“I have a name,” Gabe says. He can’t stand being called by that fucking number.  
  
The tech sighs, whole body sagging. Finally Gabe can recognize a bit of decency out of the impeachable indifference they self-project onto themselves. “Mister Reyes.” Honestly he’s surprised she was able to recall his name so quickly. “We’ve made a note of his poor reaction to the treatment, but with some monitoring it likely won’t happen again. He’s going to be fine.”  
  
He huffs. “He wasn’t fine a few hours ago. He was real fucked up a few hours ago.”  
  
What he didn’t exactly go into detail about was what he walked into.  
  
 _More blood than he’d seen in a while, puddling at the feet of his roommate and friend. At the sound of Gabe’s entrance, Jack lifted his gaze from his hands and looked at him. His eyes were bloodshot and heavy, a faraway look from his persistently bright friend. “Jack?” He reached out carefully.  
  
_ _He couldn’t see a weapon or any immediate danger besides the blood dripping from the gashes along his forearm -- and he’d shredded the damn thing, like cheese -- through the sluggish efforts of the accelerated healing. He wasn’t afraid to approach the man. At this point he’d grab him armed and foaming at the mouth.  
  
_ _Jack stared at him through this gauzy haze before recognizing him, upset. Finally he seemed to notice his arm, too. “Gabe, I don’t know wh- I just couldn’t look at them anymore,” he said, thoughtfully.  
  
_ _Gabe dropped his guard and slammed a fist into the panic button near their door. “What, your fuckin’ arm?” He grabbed his bloodied hand and pulled him close. “They can just take the whole damn thing away if it bothers you so much.” He found one of his black scarves, and tightened it around his arm up near the elbow, where it might staunch the bleeding until help arrived. He pulled him over to one of their beds, where he sat and pulled Jack up, one hand in hand, the other wrapped around the injured wrist, holding it up and away from the rest of him.  
  
_ _Bloodied or not, Gabe held onto him like a teddy bear. Jack hardly seemed to mind, letting his head fall back onto Gabe’s shoulder as the adrenaline of self-infliction wore off.  
  
_ “Fine.” Gabe was brought back to the moment as the tech spoke, eyeing him with scrutiny. “I’ll pretend I didn’t catch you in here, and you don’t give me grief the next time I have to give you an intramuscular injection.”  
  
He gives her a lazy salute in response. Her footsteps are the barest echo of a sound down the hall before he hears Jack speak up.  
  
“Hey.” The hand in his gives a little squeeze.  
  
Gabe looks over and -- after dominating the flash flood of relief -- pins Jack down with an unimpressed but mild glare. Jack smiles back at him.  
  
“You know, this is why I told you not to rush into these treatments. Let some other guy have a bad reaction, Jackie, I _like_ you.”  
  
Jack scoffs, shakes his head and smiles. Gabe puts his head against the back of his chair and stares at the ceiling, ignoring the tension of the heavy load of his little speech as it settles over the silence that follows. Maybe mercifully, Jack doesn’t say anything more. It should piss him off at least somewhat, but Gabe is decidedly not a Big Enough Asshole to poke at the problem. To be honest, the greatest sensation he’s feeling is relief.  
  
When he looks back, Jack is prying off the bandages with his other hand.  
  
“Hey,” Gabe says seriously. The hold he has on Jack’s injured hand tightens but he doesn’t quite try and stop him.  
  
The bandages spool away little by little, and what Gabe expects is a flush of blood, but the skin underneath is smooth and completely knit together. Only a few hours later and it’s like it never happened at all.  
  
Briefly and invasively, Gabe recalls a mosaic of scars along one of Jack’s arms. He never appeared self-conscious, never made an effort to hide them or keep his shirt on rather than suffer the occasional intrusive stare. Gabe wanted to ask so many times, but he never felt close enough, wasn’t sure with himself whether being close enough validated trying to peer into a room he was never invited into in the first place.  
  
As for those scars, they’re mostly gone. Erased with Jack’s episode and Jack, despite his exhaustion, looks absolutely in awe of it, like the man staring into the first light bulb.  
  
“I was right,” he whispers. Like the first time Superman realized he could deflect a bullet.  
  
*  
  
  
Gabe understands this feeling six months later, understands it like a knife through the heart. When the director of the program decides that they’ve experimented enough with the treatments and the training, wants to throw them into the fire and see if they all burn up. They’re still neck deep in the Crisis, after all.  
  
They’re dropped into South Carolina, somewhere along the edge of the national forest. Gabe’s thrilled halfway to death, raking his eyes over the gold landscape like a lion uncaged. He wasn’t given that “travel the world” speech in his high school’s lunchroom, he just wanted a direction to fling himself in when he decided to sign up. He hasn’t seen much of the world yet but he can already tell California sits in his heart like an anchor. Carolina is strange. Low and dry, hot and intense.  
  
Jack looks comfortable, basking in it all like a cat.  
  
The town into which they were unceremoniously dropped has been cleared out due to the encroaching wave of omnics. They were lucky the program set base so close in nearby Missouri. Usually these rural folks suffer alone.    
  
It doesn’t take long before the fight reaches them, and Gabe meets it like a soldier. Just a soldier. He’s fast, he’s stronger and more agile, still as tactically sharp as he was before the program. He’s a little disappointed that he can’t, fuck, fly or something. That Superman dilemma, however, comes rushing up the day they get ambushed. He didn’t know he could deflect a bullet until he tried.  
  
That thought splits him from his rational self, like his head’s been cleaved in two between the bright and the brave parts of him, when a bastion drops from a ship and caves in the ground at its base. Jack’s crouched with some civilians -- _obviously_ \--  and turns just as it arms its gatling gun.  
  
And Gabe throws himself between them, taking an impressive hail of bullets into the bulk of his armored chest. Jack launches a trio of helix rockets at the thing from around the shield of his friend’s body and it goes down with a sad whine as Gabe hits the ground. From its corpse a bright red light shoots into the sky and erupts like a firework. Gabe hears Jack yell something, a string of something.  
  
Jack hauls his body away and out of sight while command chatters in his ear to sit tight -- a squad of Crusaders is en route. “I didn’t know we were gettin’ some of those,” he mumbles.  
  
“Yeah, well this fight’s gotten a lot bigger over the past week,” Jack says as he props him up against something hard. The wind still blows against his face. He’s absolutely in shock so he enjoys that while it lasts. He also enjoys Jack’s hand gently resting on his face, pushing the flop of hair out of his eyes. “Why did you do that?”  
  
“Wanted to see what my superpower was,” Gabe says, trying and failing to push himself away from the thing he’s leaning against but he’s so, so heavy. The pain slowly seeps in -- he feels like an oil painting. “And I saved your ass.”  
  
Jack scoops up his hand and holds it while he guides him to a position flat against the ground. It’s getting harder to focus on anything but the parts of him that are on fire, throbbing like a dog-sized hornet that keeps stinging him. Jack cracks the outer shell of his armor and pulls it apart.  
  
“Congratulations, you’re hard to kill.” Jack’s voice sounds farther away. His hands are wet when he pulls them back, but he looks serene. He can’t fool Gabe -- the man shares a bathroom with him -- he knows when Jack is terrified. His hands tremble until the ground under them shakes, shakes Gabe up with a hiss, the telltale clashes of armor against earth. “They’re here,” he says, eyes turned toward the uproar, a round of hearty laughter and the clamor of those huge suits pounding against the ground.  
  
“I’ve never seen them in person before,” Gabe groans, opening his eyes just as a Crusader brushes past them. They all look like something out of one of those movies he used to watch when he was a kid, with the huge robots. There were a ton of them.  
  
They have coverage on one side, but another Crusader puts their back to them and engages their shield to cover them from the other side. “Where did those people go?” Gabe asks, staring at the shimmering field of light and its stalwart bearer looming over the stage. “This wouldn’t have been for much if they all got blown to shit.”  
  
“They scattered in a safe direction,” Jack replies distractedly. His hands are working where Gabe can’t see them, but he feels them putting pressure on his stomach. Jack will carefully explain to him later that he was holding some of his guts in his body until their healing took over. “Gabriel, you son of a bitch.”  
  
Gabe smiles at him. He shudders as pain washes over him like a roll of thunder and that makes Jack press harder, throwing him a desperate look every other moment.  
  
“I love you, but don’t ever do anything that stupid again.”  
  
*  
  
When Reaper steps from the plane onto the tarmac of the Talon base he’s met with eerie silence. It’s full dark outside, no stars above the hills of Vega Alta and no spotlights through the canopy of trees that shields the entrance from prying eyes. Their bases never sleep, and beyond that there always a team who escorts them back inside. There’s no one, and despite all his forced apathy, Reaper is anxious.  
  
 _Every time you’ve felt suspicious,_ the voice in the back of his head says, _you’ve had a reason for it.  
  
_ He lets out a low growl, the only sound that jerks the invisible leash back from his goons. They -- the five of them -- stop and turn slowly. By now, he’s come to an educated guess that they’re from test tubes, and every single time they do anything in unison he’s less and less certain that they’re human at all.  
  
A few of them adjust their weapons. They all stand just out of arm’s reach. That sense of anticipation, that unstoppable dread right before something bad happens. That’s when he remembers there were six of them back on the carrier.  
  
One of them breaks position just as he hears the hum over his shoulder, a pitying tilt to his head. “Sorry, boss.”  
  
He’s lit up like an electrical fire. The goons surround him, weapons drawn, as he’s forced to his knees from the lightning storm being threaded through his body. It’s too much to evaporate out of -- the power keeps him together like a bag over his head -- terrifyingly solid. As he lowers himself to his hands, then his chest pressing against the cold ground, he battles between his surprise that his subordinates possess enough guile to betray him and his fury at, well, everything else.  
  
*  
  
“Are you saying I don’t have a right to be angry?”  
  
The clock on the wall ticks so, so loud between what he says and whatever’s going to happen next. In that space she writes something down and doesn’t look at him. Gabriel stares at her, waiting.  
  
Her dark hair falls down below her shoulders, silver earrings visible on one side where she’s tucked those strands behind her ear. There’s a long scar splitting her lips into four distinct sections and, while it doesn’t look fresh, it looks painful. Gabriel switches tactics and sacrifices some of his grace.  
  
“That’s a pretty nasty scar,” he says thoughtfully. “How’d it happen, if you don’t mind me asking?”  
  
The moment her pen stops and her lips purse, he feels like a Huge Asshole. He’s hoping he hasn’t truly upset her, but he needs to poke at her a little, just enough to force her to drop that academic act and talk to him like a real person.  
  
“Crisis,” she says. She sets the pen down and looks up at him. _Crisis_ is a word imbued with so much history sometimes it’s all that needs to be said. She goes on, however. “Got this scar in an omnic attack that leveled my neighborhood when I was a kid. That’s all.”  
  
Gabriel nods, tries to make his expression open but it must look imploring, because she sets her pen down with finality. “I was angry, for a long time,” she says. Her stare could light a match. “However, there is a difference between anger in the hand that holds power, and anger in the hands of the powerless, Commander Reyes.”  
  
 _Damn it._ She has a point and he immediately concedes to it with a bow of his head.  
  
“I’m not trying to put you on the spot, Commander, but you’re here for misuse of authority to… varying degrees.”  
  
God, if only she knew. When they first went through these sessions they were for maintenance. Both the stress of leadership and the harrowing experiences in war and post-war activity threatened to knock out the world’s heroes one by one. He and Jack and Ana would all exchange banter and maybe get together for quiet, personal time. He knows this time they won’t be waiting for him, he’ll face the aftermath of this on his own, in the dull silence of New Jersey in February.  
  
“I’ve read the statements.”  
  
Gabriel knows these last few meetings were for the express purpose of trying to wring some sympathy out of Jack and the powers that be that desperately want to out him as a rogue entity. He’s just tugging a few more inches out of the rope he’s got around his neck. It makes him so angry, having to beg and bargain for the credibility he’s already earned, that he’s been dragging behind him for two decades already.  
  
If only they knew-  
  
“If only any of them knew what we’re up against, what it takes to fight it.” He says it without really meaning to, the back and forth of his thoughts always leading back to a helplessness that the UN and their willful ignorance is going to destroy all that they fought to protect, unless he creates a big enough crater to grab their -- and Jack’s -- attention. It used to be so easy, at least with the latter.  
  
She looks up, startled but hiding it well. He’s seen that look before. He briefly wonders how high her clearance is.  
  
He curls a hand against his thigh and takes a deep breath. “They asked me to help protect the world. Some things can’t be beaten down with a strongly-worded letter.”  
  
She squints at him now as though trying to stare at the sun. It’s as honest an expression as he’s ever seen, of someone who’s really trying to understand him. “We need to find our way back to the mission that sent you to me.” She leads him, quietly and patiently, through a river of blood.  
  
Deep in his chest, Gabriel’s heart thunders.  
  
*  
  
Reaper’s been here before, under a red light, mask off and totally exposed. He’s made up of building blocks that only he can dismantle. Weirdly enough, in all the time he’s been with Talon, even with all the early experiments, there’s only one other person who’s seen him without his mask on.  
  
She stands before him now, red and venomous like a copperhead. Still, she talks to him like a person, not like a child reaching their hand towards a hot stove, scared but curious.  
  
“They were concerned with your performance,” she says without a hint of judgment, looking over his bare hands as liquid slowly drips into the IV tube attached to the base of his neck. “More precisely, with your hesitation in eliminating the target. They suggested reprogramming, obviously.”  
  
It’s kind of fucked up to admit it, but he finds these sessions almost calming. Whatever she does, it smooths the bleeding edges of his ghastly body, makes it easier to control and tolerate. Even the steady beep of the distress beacon becomes quieter background noise.  
  
He’s lulled into docility and it’s only just briefly that he realizes Doctor O'Deorain and that agent Kennedy have the same accent. “I don’t think that’s necessary. You’re capable of functioning as a free agent, just as you have for the last couple of decades,” she huffs a bitter laugh.  
  
“They are afraid of me,” Reaper says.   
  
She hums an affirmative. With her examination done, she gets up, collects a few things, and walks to the door. One long nail taps the door frame and she looks at him over her shoulder. “They will fear you more so, when you are completely back to yourself, Commander. I look forward to it.” She leaves.   
  
That’s the second time he’s been taunted with his years-long fugue state in one day, but it rolls over him like a cold breeze. In his personal quarters, far and away from the rest of the base, he feels confident enough to push that anxiety to the back of his mind.   
  
The red lights strobe above his head like a heartbeat. The ringing in his ears comes back and climbs to a crescendo but the voice in his head talks him through it.   
  
 _Los Angeles,_ it whispers like a mantra, longing scoring trenches into his chest.   
  
 _Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Los Angeles._

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thanks so much for reading this, it's probably the thing I care about most that I'm working on right now, comments are loved and appreciated
> 
> a few notes:   
> the uses of reaper vs gabe vs gabriel are intentional
> 
> sorry to jump around so much but that's gonna be pretty typical until later on in the story
> 
> how did jack sneak hair dye into the program? easy, the same way he snuck it into basic

**Author's Note:**

> missmonomyth on tumblr
> 
> thanks for reading :)


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